A report published Friday by the The Information indicated that Oracle is looking at cutting costs by up to US$1 billion, possibly laying off thousands of employees by as early as August.
The layoffs would happen on the heels of the company’s June 2022 closing of its US$28 billion purchase of Cerner to give Oracle a bigger presence in healthcare technology. That acquisition, according to the company website, will add approximate 28,000 new employees.
The report goes onto say that an Oracle spokesperson with knowledge of the situation said that the proposed layoffs could ‘disproportionately impact’ workers in the U.S. and Europe and would include employees responsible for marketing of software applications for automating customer service and e-commerce.
This comes amid rumours of the departure of two key executives, chief marketing officer Ariel Kelman, who came from AWS only two years ago, and Juergen Lindner, senior vice president of marketing for software as a service (SaaS).
Lindner’s area is rumoured to be subject to a reorganization and potential cuts. Kelman has been working with the team to bring on TikTok, the controversial app that selected the Oracle platform in 2020. TikTok itself has been under scrutiny by the US government due to suspicions that it could be forced to share data with the Chinese government.